why do u never hear about some book authors winning anything?

[Desdia72]

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Watch it! That's the most feared player on the Internet you're talking about.

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LOL! i was thinking, "he can't be serious".

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In the past 2 years, Chris Moneymaker has made more money than everyone else in the world except 2 players (I think), and that includes this "Doyle Brunson" guy!

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i don't think anybody is fearing him online though, especially good PS players.

[lastchance]

Just kidding around. I don't know how good MM is. I think he's decent, not amazing. Probably can hold his own, but can't destroy tables like Ivey and Brunson can.

[Desdia72]

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If you have trouble keeping up with orders, wouldn't it be more logical to increase supply and not try to keep demand down? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Although I understand why you wouldn't want to go on the tournament circuit in the hopes of winning a tournament for tonnes of reasons.

Desdia - I think you fail to understand that most posters here focus more on Greg Reymers past poker writing over his past poker tournament success in this discussion. Which seems somewhat relevant when talking about a poker book. I am sure that if Men worked with someone good with poker writing he could produce a very intersting poker book.

But simply assuming someone will produce a great book because of their tournament success is nonsense. Some of the worst poker books available have been written by players with much poker success.

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i understand fully that most of these posters look at Greg's past writing/posting on this site over his actual/past tourney success but, IMO, simply going by past posts on 2+2 does'nt mean much to a guy like me when you can't back up all that poker analysis and application with irrefutable tournament success results. hell, Greg does'nt even have to be a Daniel Negreanu or Men Nguyen...he could be a Can Kim Hua or David Levi (yet he's not even that). the simple fact is, Greg is a poker player, not a poker COACH, he's no Phil Jackson or Red Auerabach in the poker world, he's still a player who's goal to to win and make money. i could care less how his past posts would translate
into a viable tournament book. as i stated earlier, i see no need in spending my money on a tournament essay book from a guy who's had so-so tournament success (with the exception of the WSOP ME) to date, simply because he can discuss and analyze poker tourney situations good.

[lastchance]

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as i stated earlier, i see no need in spending my money on a tournament essay book from a guy who's had so-so tournament success (with the exception of the WSOP ME) to date, simply because he can discuss and analyze poker tourney situations good.

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What the hell do you want from a tournament essay book than being able to "discuss and analyze poker tourney situations good?" That seems to me to be the entire point of a tournament essay book.

[Desdia72]

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as i stated earlier, i see no need in spending my money on a tournament essay book from a guy who's had so-so tournament success (with the exception of the WSOP ME) to date, simply because he can discuss and analyze poker tourney situations good.

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What the hell do you want from a tournament essay book than being able to "discuss and analyze poker tourney situations good?" That seems to me to be the entire point of a tournament essay book.

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why the hell would i spend $30 bones on that when i can discuss or read it for free on 2+2 everyday? is everybody in the business of padding Greg's pockets with $30 apiece just on the strength of reading about hands in tournaments that more than often than not went nowhere? heck, dudes do that at no cost on 2+2 everyday. c'mon!

[Freudian]

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i understand fully that most of these posters look at Greg's past writing/posting on this site over his actual/past tourney success but, IMO, simply going by past posts on 2+2 does'nt mean much to a guy like me when you can't back up all that poker analysis and application with irrefutable tournament success results. hell, Greg does'nt even have to be a Daniel Negreanu or Men Nguyen...he could be a Can Kim Hua or David Levi (yet he's not even that). the simple fact is, Greg is a poker player, not a poker COACH, he's no Phil Jackson or Red Auerabach in the poker world, he's still a player who's goal to to win and make money. i could care less how his past posts would translate
into a viable tournament book. as i stated earlier, i see no need in spending my money on a tournament essay book from a guy who's had so-so tournament success (with the exception of the WSOP ME) to date, simply because he can discuss and analyze poker tourney situations good.

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You are supposed to spend the money because of the quality of his poker advice, which is top quality. Use the search function on these forums to find out for yourself.

Anyway, I think you are mostly arguing for the sake of arguing. I have seen that coming from you in pretty much every thread you post in.

Do as you please. Don't buy the Fossilman book. I don't particularly care either way.

[USCSigma1097]

I'll give you the answer to this question... The reason why the book authors don't play in tournaments is that they can not afford to have their image cracked as an expert player. If you wrote a poker book and were busted out of ten straight tourneys on the first day, I dont' know if I'd buy it. To put it another way, we had a "Tough Man" contest in college to raise money by boxing. All of the guys who were supposed to be brawlers wouldn't enter because they were afraid of what would happen to their reputation if they lost. Same thing for these book authors.

Sigma

[Desdia72]

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I'll give you the answer to this question... The reason why the book authors don't play in tournaments is that they can not afford to have their image cracked as an expert player. If you wrote a poker book and were busted out of ten straight tourneys on the first day, I dont' know if I'd buy it. To put it another way, we had a "Tough Man" contest in college to raise money by boxing. All of the guys who were supposed to be brawlers wouldn't enter because they were afraid of what would happen to their reputation if they lost. Same thing for these book authors.

Sigma

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hold up, David Sklansky is the author of THE "IT" Book on tournament poker right now. he is pretty much unchallenged when it comes to the mathematics and theorums of tournament poker-- an expert if you will. surely you could'nt be thinking he would be afraid to be shown up with his superior skill and all.

[tripdad]

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Greg Raymer won the 5 million dollar event - would you buy a book from him? If his terrible play at the Table of Champions didn't prove the theory that really great things can happen to really bad players, I don't know what would.

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to say that Raymer played terribly in this event is to show ignorance in the correct strategy in a winner take all event.

cheers!

[ricdaman]

I'm going to try and summerize some of what has been said, and see if we can wrap this up. I also want to make a few marketing points of my own (from a business perspective).

There are two questions in this post. (1) Why do big book sellers not win in tournaments, (2) Why don't big book sellers play tournements to boost book sales?

First of all, what is the purpose of playing in tournaments? Most of the book writers say they still make the majority of their money from poker, yet we don't hear about them. What you must understand is, there are two types of poker players. Those that mostly play tournaments, and those that mostly play ring games.

Let's break this question up. Why do those that mostly play ring games not play tournaments? ,and Why don't we hear about the tournament players winning anything big in the past 5-6 years?

Let's start with the ring players, since it is easier to answer. I believe David said in another thread he plays 300-600 all the time, so I'll use him in this example. The only reason for someone like David to play in a tournment would be to boost book sales, since he is so good at ring games. (This assumption is based on the posts in this thread and other threads). Without getting into the supply/demand problem that Mason mentioned, the question is this: how much would winning a televised tournament boost David's book sales?

Here's the answer: Let's say there are Xa number of people who will buy at least 1 poker book in the next year. The only other variables are: how much someone would want to purchase one book over another - We'll call this Xb, or "suggested value" (the amount the book has been suggested), and how much the book is marketed - We'll call this Xc, or "marketing boost." It would show that the number of times David's book (Xd) is purchased is:

Xd = Xa * Xb * Xc

or

Book Puchases = # of buyers * Suggested Value * Marketing Boost

In a numerical represation, say there are 10 buyers, and let's say David's book is suggested 4 to 1 (80% of the time someone suggests a poker book, it's David's book they suggest). Finally, we'll make marketing boost (Xc) a numerical value of +/- 1 with 1 being neutral. So that little to no marketing hurts (say, 0.5), and a lot of marketing helps (say 1.5).

Xd = 10 * .80 * .75 = 6

In this example, David sells 6 books to 10 buyers. Now, how much can winning a tournament boost his book sales? The answer is... not enough to make it worth it. Do you see why? Winning a tournment would affect marketing boost. It might bring it up to 1, so that

Xd = 10 * .80 * 1 = 8

David sells an extra 2 books. So here's the question... would the cost of playing multiple televised tournaments to win one (this would be a loss assuming he makes less in those tournaments than he would have playing his regular ring game) be less than his increased profits from his book sales? In this case, I think the answer is no. I think David's "suggestion value" is so high, that marketing will not help that much.

Ok, on to the next question... what about the tournament players? Let's look at 2 examples. Example one is Tom McEvoy who has not won a major tournament in the past 5-6 years, and Phil Helmuth who has won tons of major tournaments in the past 5-6 years.

Tom: Marketing boost = 1 since he did win in the past, but not recently. His books really aren't all that great, so we'll give him a suggestion value of 10%.

Tom = 10 * .10 * 1 = 1 book

Phil: We'll give him a marketing boost of 2 since he is very well known and wins a lot of tournaments. His book sucks though, so it gets a suggestion value of 10%.

Phil = 10 * .10 * 2 = 2 books

LOOK!!! Phil sells twice as many books as he would if he did not play in major tournaments, YET he only sells 2 books compared to David's 6!!!!

What I am trying to show is this: How good a book is written (shown by "suggested value") matters FAR MORE than how much it is marketed. This is true with any product, not just books. That is why book writers playing in tournaments will not affect book sales enough to make this move profitable.